Last week we focused on the Transfiguration of Jesus pointing us to His Resurrection. This week, Sunday’s Gospel passage of the woman at the well (John 4:5-42) points us toward Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The woman and Jesus are both thirsty for something earthly and something spiritual. She is thirsting for physical water and subconsciously, for love. (Check out some key Old Testament stories of a man meeting his future bride…
“He saved us and called us to a holy life…” – 2 Timothy 1:9 This second week of Lent, we travel up Mt. Tabor with Peter, James, and John and witness Jesus’ Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9). This miraculous manifestation of the Holy Trinity seems like a strange detour during Lent. Shouldn’t we be sitting somewhere covered in sackcloth and ashes (Jonah 3:5-6)? Instead, we find ourselves on a mountaintop surrounded by Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, the…
Imagine you’re there with Jesus, the disciples, and Mary at the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-11). No one knows it, but Jesus is about to perform His first sign of turning water into wine. However, a few things need to happen before that. First, the wine must run out. Next, Mary will employ her feminine gift of sensitivity to notice the newlyweds’ need, intercede for the couple to Jesus, then demonstrate her authority by…
“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?’” …Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” – John 6:13-14 I often feel like I am running low. Like I don’t have enough time, energy, money, or other resources to do the things that God is calling me to do. I know in my mind that I have a “poverty…
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. –Acts 2:1-3 Pentecost is the birthday of the Church! “For it was from the side of Christ…
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.- John 10:10 The Bible verse above is one worth memorizing. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, gave us a secret to joyful, fulfilling life in this summation of His rescue mission to save us. He came to give us His abundant life, both in this life here and now and the next. So if Jesus came to give us an abundant life, why do…
O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!- Isaiah 2:5 Advent is a beautiful time of silence, patience, and prayer. We prepare for Christ, the Light (John 8:12), to come to us in the darkness. We prepare for the fullness of life–zoe in Greek–that Jesus, the Life (John 14:6) offers us: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). We light the…
Christ, our Good Shepherd is our gate—our Way—to heaven (John 10:9; 14:6). Jesus spoke about the effort it takes to enter the heavenly gate: “Strive to enter through the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter but will not be strong enough” (Luke 13:24). To go through that narrow gate, we must make ourselves small and humble. We can become small by striving to become like little children, like God’s beloved…
Here in the desert of Lent, the Lord brings us to the oasis of Jacob’s well. The Samaritan woman came at noon to fill her water jar. Had she been without water all morning? Perhaps she came at noon to avoid people who gossiped about her and her five husbands. We can use our Gospel imagination and suppose that she came to the well dry, thirsty, and ashamed. But something amazing happened: she had an…
Today Jesus reveals His divinity at the miracle at Cana. It was Mary who noticed that the wine had run short at the wedding: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3). Jesus replied: “My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). Jesus’s hour came later at the Last Supper, where He turned bread and wine into His Body and Blood: “Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this…